The present invention is generally directed to product dispensers and, more particularly, to a dispenser having a lockout feature that prevents the dispensing of product from a non-approved source.
Automatic towel and similar product dispensers have been developed to reduce the waste generally associated with manual dispensers. Automatic dispensers typically include a motor driven drive roller that advances web material, such as hand towel material, from a web material roll. Early automatic dispensers required a user to depress a feed button to activate the drive roller. More recently, automatic dispensers have incorporated proximity sensor technology to allow hands-free or otherwise contact-free activation of the drive roller.
Conventional automatic dispensers advance web material from the web material roll according to predetermined settings that result in the same amount of web material being dispensed regardless of the particular characteristics of the web material to be dispensed. For example, a conventional automatic towel dispenser will advance a fixed amount of web material from a web material roll independent of the absorbency of the web material. As a result, it is possible for too much or too little web material to be dispensed; both of which can lead to waste. When too much web material is dispensed, the excess cannot be retrieved and reused and therefore creates waste. When too little web material is dispensed, a user will often retrigger the dispenser to dispense additional web material possibly resulting in additional waste.
Accordingly, a number of “smart” dispensers have been developed that are able to obtain information about certain characteristics of a web material roll, or the web material wrapped therearound, and adjust the dispensing settings accordingly. One such dispenser is described in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2005/0171634. This publication describes a dispenser having a reader or scanner that communicates with an RFID “smart” chip or tag embedded in the core of a roll. The smart chip includes information relating to the type of product to be dispensed. For a roll of hand towel material, that information may include absorbency, basis weight, and manufacturer. The scanner reads this information from the smart chip and communicates that information to a processor that adjusts performance settings accordingly. For example, the feed length may be adjusted based on the information contained in the smart chip. Additionally, the processor may disable the automatic drive or feed components if an unapproved or unrecognized roll is loaded into the dispenser. The automatic drive components may also be disabled if no information is gathered from the smart chip, which may occur when a roll absent a smart chip is loaded into the dispenser. This “lockout” feature is intended to reduce jamming of the dispenser, damage to the dispenser, and/or unsatisfactory dispensing of web material that may result from use of an unapproved or an unrecognized roll.
In addition to significantly adding to the cost of each roll and the dispenser itself by virture of the necessary reader(s) and circuitry, such smart chips or RFID tags are only effective if the web material of the roll matches the information encoded in the smart tag. If there is a mismatch between the web material and the encoded information, the performance settings of the dispenser will not be tailored to the specifics of the web material to be dispensed. Further, the lockout feature is designed to prevent the use of unauthorized or unrecognized rolls with the automatic dispenser. If there is an inconsistency between the encoded information and the actual web material to be dispensed, the lockout feature may not function properly.
Another “smart” dispenser, which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,040,566, uses a bar code-embedded roll and a bar code reader to determine if the roll is from an authorized source before the dispenser is activated to dispense material from the roll. The bar code reader is described as a phototransistor reflective object sensor that reads the bar code associated with a roll loaded into the dispenser and transmits a code signal to a controller that compares the code signal to a set of approved codes maintained in a computer readable database. If the code associated with the code signal does not match an approved code, the dispenser is automatically locked out form dispensing material from the loaded roll.
While such a smart dispenser is believed to be effective in preventing unauthorized rolls from being loaded into a dispenser, the cost and the collective size of the components can result in a significant increase in the overall cost, complexity, and size of the dispenser. For example, such a lockout system requires not only the aforementioned bar code reader/sensor and microcontroller but also an analog to digital converter for digitizing the analog output of the reader.
The above-described systems can also often be circumvented by removing the bar code or RFID tag and placing them on the core of a new roll or merely in appropriate proximity to the reader. The dispenser can then be loaded with an unapproved or unrecognized roll and be caused to operate as if an approved or recognized roll has been loaded. As a result, the waste management, performance and supply control advantages provided by the smart chips or RFID tags may not be realized.